


The Ivory Muse

by tsunderestorm



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Inspired by Pygmalion and Galatea (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28989864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: Please, please, send me a wife, the living likeness of my ivory girl. Renew my faith, please.A re-imagining of Pygmalion and his Galatea, featuring Ignatz Victor.(Written for Fódlan’s Fables: A Fairytale & Folklore-Inspired Fire Emblem: Three Houses Anthology.)
Relationships: Ignatz Victor/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8
Collections: Fódlan's Fables





	The Ivory Muse

When the Eagle was bent to breaking and the Deer in all of its gilt glory had left to pursue greener pastures, the Lion reigned supreme. In search of the balance that the newly united Fodlan needed, King Dimitri sought to fill his court with those who had aided him in his quests. Among them: Ignatz Victor, who had fought for Faerghus but traded his bow for his favored paintbrush when the war was won.

Ignatz was eternally grateful to have been offered the position of royal court artisan for the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, to live in the grand castle at Fhirdiad and fill his workshop with ample materials to create works of art at his benefactor’s behest. Although he loved to work with inks and paints, and found solace in page after page of sketches on the finest vellum, for the court, he specialized in portraits.

He filled a canvas with an image of Sir Galatea on her splendid Pegasus that moved the knight to tears. He painted a perfect likeness of the newly-risen Lord Molinaro, who had ascended to become an ambassador for foreign relations with his homeland. He made a masterpiece of a triptych depicting characters from an ancient Northern myth for the new Margrave Gautier’s study and what he considered to be a stunning portrait of Duke Fraldarius in his father’s iconic cloak, a perfect Shield. Seeing their personalities surge forth from the canvas, seeing their glee and delight at his creations made it worth it… at least, for a while.

After years spent holding a paintbrush and years of putting paint to canvas to capture likenesses that were second to none, he grew tired, and fatigue brewed resentment Tired of paintings and tired even of his self-indulgent drawings, tired of the court, tired of being alone. Although each word of praise, each comment and compliment on his finished pieces made his heart swell, he could not shake the discontent. He felt pulled in two directions at once, stuck somewhere between the loneliness that gnawed like a hunger, and the disgust that burned like poison.

Surely, he thought, it would be better if he were not alone in the world. In his despondency, he formed an image of a beautiful woman, one who began to haunt his waking hours as often as his dreams. Softly, shyly, he made a request of the King for stone from which to carve a sculpture. Impressed with his work, Dimitri granted his wish and sent for crafting materials of the finest quality. One by one, they were carried into Ignatz’s workshop: banded alabaster, marble, and a block of the finest ivory.

Sketch in hand, he set to work on a statue of his dream, humming to himself as he first bestowed upon her long, flowing hair like Lady Rhea’s. Carving pieces away from the block of stone like a madman, he blushed as he carved each curve of her shapely body. He worked day and night to cover her form in the illusion of elegant, sweeping silks; hours of his personal time left when the days’ work was done. Hours stretched into days, and days became weeks. Weeks dragged on into months, trapped as if in a fever dream, fixated on sculpting the woman whose image would not leave his mind.

Each piece of her was a detail that could not be overlooked: the delicate crook of her finger as he sculpted the bit of silken skirt she may hold in her grasp, the indent of each dainty toenail on her bare feet upon their ivory pedestal, the dimple in her smooth ivory cheek. It became an obsession; an escape from the society he’d grown to resent. King Dimitri was not and had never been unkind to him, but Faerghus’ veneration of the saints and their teachings had coddled the courtiers into a sense of solace, a comfortable cruelty that Ignatz found shameful. They were content to rip into each other with the kind of vitriol he could not even fathom in times of war.

In his workshop with his sculpture, he was safe. Courtiers could not see him here and ridicule him for his lack of a partner. His ivory lady did not care that his blood was not blue, and in return he carved her in such detail that one could see the tiny press of veins in her moon-pale arms. In his workshop, between commissioned portraits of the King and all of his courtiers who were as shallow as a wash basin, he could chisel, scrape and smooth away at her likeness until he forgot the world.

One day, however, the inevitable happened: she was complete. He stepped back and with hands dry, raw, and bandaged lest he bleed on her perfect ivory form, he wiped the dust from his brow and beheld her. She was perfect, truly the vision he had seen in his mind. Completed, however, she was still his respite. When other court artisans questioned why he’d taken no wife to warm his bed, he retreated to his workshop and his ivory lady, to whom he spoke but who asked no uncomfortable questions. When courtiers giggled behind exotic feathered fans and whispered theories about his evasion, it was the outstretched arms of his ivory girl into which he ran for comfort.

On cold winter mornings when the knights rallied in the courtyard decorated with cloaks emblazoned with azure lions, he draped his sculpture in a cloak of the finest velvet lest she grow cold in her filmy gown. On hot summer days, he tipped goblets of water to her lips, wetting the polished ivory with fresh, cool water like a real maiden, lest her lips dry and crack. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to make his ivory lady flesh and blood! To care for her and receive her praise and appreciation, to be gazed upon by her beautiful, round face with the same adoration that he felt towards her!

He was in love with her, and ready to admit it! She was not the Goddess or one of the lovely saints destined to be forever out of his reach, or a part of their shameful society. She was his sculpture, his creation, his inspiration. He could never be happy, could never be anything but the bizarre artist bound to his workshop, without a wife, but he would take no wife that was not his ivory girl. She had heard each complaint he’d directed towards the court and its customs and had received each proclamation of love with the same sweet, upturned mouth and the same soft, heavy-lidded eyes.

Desperate, he made a pilgrimage to the Goddess. When he arrived, Sothis’ domain welcomed him with torches blazing bright in the atrium, and prostrating himself before the empty throne he made one simple plea:

_Please, please, send me a wife, the living likeness of my ivory girl. Renew my faith, please._

He brought along an offering: a beautifully rendered portrait of the Goddess in the azure and pink robes she’d worn years ago, her likeness surrounded with depictions of her children. Seiros beside her, winged helmet gleaming with gold, Cichol and his doted-upon Cethleann seated at her feet, healing and guiding a recovering warrior. Macuil in his mage’s robes with Indech beside him, reading from a heavy tome. He’d worked for weeks on perfecting each and every brush stroke while his beloved muse had watched from her pedestal. Sothis heard his pleas and took pity on him. Ignatz was young, gifted, and when he bowed so low that his head touched the cold stone and presented his painting on the altar, Sothis gifted him with a vision.

The image of a woman who bore an incredible resemblance to his statue greeting him as entered his modest home, rosy-cheeked and blessedly _alive_ filled his mind. At first, Ignatz did not know what to make of it. Not wanting to sleep without one last vision of his ivory girl to carry into his dreams, he ran to his workshop upon his return to the castle and saw her, arms outstretched, calling to him.

Suddenly feeling very foolish for even thinking that the Goddess would care enough about a lowly court painter to grant him his wish, he embraced her. He would be content with his sculpture and he would simply have to live as an outcast if it meant not having her. What person could hope to understand his love? What human being of flesh and blood would not grow jealous of a piece of art and attempt persuade him to love them in turn?

As he pressed his tear-stained cheek to his sculpture, he found that she seemed different. In the warm light of a dozen lamps, her skin seemed bright. He kissed her cheek and felt a flush beneath it, brightening beneath his touch until she was as rosy-cheeked as a gleeful child in the midst of winter. He laid his head against her chest, and instead of cool stone against his splotched face, it was warm, living flesh against his cheek. Most astoundingly, he could hear the beat of a heart quickening against his ear. Was this real, or was he simply imagining it? Was this a lucid fever dream brought on by his irregular sleep and the heavy workload he was shouldering for that season’s round of debutante courtiers’ daughters?

No, this was no dream. He felt it as sure as he felt soft skin beneath his palm, as sure as the gossamer strands of flaxen hair slid through his fingers like silk. Suddenly, his vision at Sothis’ temple made sense to him in startling clarity. Fresh tears fell in fat droplets onto his statue as he murmured his prayers and thanks to the Goddess. He kissed the tips of his lady’s fingers, up her arms and over her elegant shoulders, all over her cheeks, where her tears mirrored his own and her warm breath fogged his eyeglasses. She whispered, “ _Oh, Ignatz, my only true love,_ ” and he knew it to be irrevocably real, knew her voice to be just that which he’d imagined in his dreams: airy and melodic and absolutely perfect.

Overjoyed, he requested an audience with his royal benefactor to be held first thing the next morning and beaming, he presented his wife-to-be on bended knee. King Dimitri and Queen Byleth blessed their marriage, satisfied that Ignatz’ muse had come to life amid their very own court and indicated the Goddess’ pleasure with his rule. No longer would Ignatz hide in his workshop, no longer would he grit his teeth as court gossip spilled from jealous lips damned one person or another.

Happily, blissfully wed, Ignatz and his ivory muse lived in pure bliss for the rest of their days.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! 💙 I am so excited for this anthology to be in everyone's hands. thank you for supporting it whether it was ordering a copy, spreading the word, or just reading and viewing the creators' pieces! 
> 
> [my twitter](twitter.com/tsunderestorm) | [anthology twitter](twitter.com/fodlansfables) | boost this fic [here](https://twitter.com/tsunderestorm/status/1353914457060233216?s=20)
> 
> beautiful accompanying illustration by tracey ( [twitter](https://twitter.com/sordhand) | [tumblr](https://sheepskin.tumblr.com) | [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheepskin) )


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